“There’s your call to action, Mr. Seaton,” he wound up with.
“Yes, but what action?” demanded the owner of the bungalow. Ever since the discovery of the loss of the papers this man had seemed all but unable to speak.
“We’ve got to overhaul that other motor boat, though her length will have to be description enough if we can’t get a better one,” declared the young skipper. “Hank, go down and open up the motor room. Start the motors going, though be gentle. Don’t break anything, or put the motors out of business. Joe, go back to the wireless, and see whether you can get a more exact description of that boat—especially the course she is believed to have sailed on. Hustle! Mr. Seaton, hadn’t you better inform Dr. Cosgrove that you’ll be absent for a while?”
The owner of the bungalow moved as though glad of directions that saved him the trouble of thinking.
Joe promptly sent a wireless back to Beaufort asking for a better description of the seventy-footer and the last course upon which she had been seen.
The only further word the lawyer’s informant could furnish, as Joe ascertained ten minutes later, was that the boat was painted a drab tint and had a “smoke-stack” ventilator. When last 111 seen the boat was heading out nearly due east from her starting-point.
“Going out to meet a liner, for some port,” clicked Tom, as he heard the news. “Well, it’s our business to find that drab motor boat.”
As Joe caught up his cap, Mr. Seaton looked rather uncertainly from one boy to the other.
“You say we’re to go out on this jaunt over the water,” remarked the owner of the bungalow. “But I don’t know. Perhaps you want me to go too badly. There may be something behind––”
“Stop right where you are, if you please, sir,” broke in Tom Halstead, a decided trace of bitterness in his tone. “You’re still more than half-inclined to suspect us boys of causing the loss of the papers you had hidden in the closet. I am not blaming you altogether, Mr. Seaton, though you are doing us a great injustice. But you must believe in us just at the present time, for going with us offers you your only chance of catching up with Dalton and saving your own friends of the syndicate. Come along, sir! Try to trust us, whether it seems wise or not, since it’s your only chance.”